Texas tea party sours on Stockman

Tea party activists hoped to oust Texas Sen. John Cornyn this year in an early-March contest that could have burnished their credibility heading into the midterms. Instead, Cornyn’s best-known challenger, Rep. Steve Stockman, has gone missing on the campaign trail, dogged by unflattering stories about his past and his ethics.

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It’s a disappointment for many national political watchers who had pulled out the popcorn for this race. Stockman has a penchant for making inflammatory statements — one of his bumper stickers read: “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.” In December, he tweeted a picture of a can of “liberal tears,” calling it the “best gun lubricant around.”

While that kind of rhetoric resonates with a corner of the GOP base, establishment Republicans trying to avoid intraparty warfare are relieved to see Stockman’s campaign founder. And as Cornyn sails toward the nomination and back to the Senate, even the most ardent Texas tea party activists are distancing themselves from the firebrand congressman — and wishing he would quit saying he’s one of them.

“I think it’s horrible,” said JoAnn Fleming, a prominent Texas tea party leader, of Stockman’s campaign. “We didn’t support Congressman Stockman, we haven’t had one conversation with him, he is a no-show at events. I’ve made it clear that Stockman’s unwillingness to be honest … disqualifies him from our organization to even consider him.”

Cornyn, the Senate minority whip, is generally considered conservative, but he has inspired plenty of frustration among the grass roots in deep-red Texas.

They didn’t like his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program; they took issue with his backing of the fiscal cliff deal; and they were furious when, last fall, he broke with tea party hero Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, over a procedural motion tied to defunding the health care law. Just last week, Cornyn sided with senators who wanted to proceed with a vote on raising the debt ceiling, again putting him at odds with Cruz and grass-roots activists.

Tea party leaders say there are other candidates who show promise in the seven-way primary contest, set for March 4. But they acknowledge it’s unlikely that any of the contenders could topple Cornyn — though they are hoping for the long-shot prospect of a runoff. Cornyn is well-funded and has strong name recognition in the massive Lone Star State, a place with 20 media markets, where running statewide is astronomically expensive. The senator also has a team with close ties to conservative activists, and he has made overtures to the grass roots as well.

“There’s always going to be some differences over tactics,” Cornyn told POLITICO in an interview before addressing a recent dinner gathering of more than 600 Republicans at a Harris County GOP dinner here. “We all agree on the same goals, by and large.”

Multiple attempts to contact representatives for Stockman were unsuccessful.

The congressman initially shook up the race when he filed a literally last-minute challenge to Cornyn right before the deadline hit in December, emerging as the only challenger in the primary with some name recognition.

But signs of trouble for Stockman quickly surfaced.

The day after he mounted his challenge, Club for Growth, a prominent group that has been funding tea party candidates, said it was staying out of the Texas race. Other tea party-linked groups, such as FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have since stayed neutral, while Cornyn has been endorsed by influential conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association and Texas Right to Life.

Since entering the contest, Stockman has made few appearances on the campaign trail, and he went largely off the grid for nearly two weeks last month (later it was revealed that he was overseas on business), missing a slew of votes in the House and time on the road in the process.

“This is kind of an unusual primary in a way,” Cornyn said. “I have seven opponents. One of them decided to leave the country. The others I haven’t really seen much of. There’s just not as much interaction between candidates in the primary as I’m used to.”

It’s unclear how many campaign events Stockman has held, but Texas news reports characterize them as “rare.”

But on Twitter, Stockman’s presence is never in doubt. He is a prolific tweeter on both his Senate campaign account, @StockmanSenate, and his official one, @SteveWorks4You. Much of the campaign account is devoted to haranguing Cornyn. Stockman tweeted a Valentine’s Day picture, for example, that charged that Cornyn — who in fact is a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act — “is cheating on you, with Obamacare.”

A series of strange stories about the congressman have filtered out since he entered the race — including one concerning an arrest in the 1970s, reportedly for drugs, though his campaign has denied it. Meanwhile, countless fact-checks have raised questions about his credibility. And he had to remove the endorsements page from his website after it became clear he was touting endorsements from past races and attempting to pass them off as support for the primary. He has sought to paint himself as the next Cruz, although the state’s junior senator has stayed out of the race.